Umwelt Microbana

being microbe.

[microbialatlas]

Biolocative Media workshop

Locative media are media devices that are fundamentally and functionally bound to a location, meaning they provide information about the a particular user’s position in space.  As such, locative media are used in tracking, mapping and locating.  What are some uses of this technology ::  data visualization for biodiversity mapping, migration habbits, twitter -based locative research.   By extension, locative biomedia refers to the tracking and mapping of biological and ecological organisms that contributes to social or environmental interactions.  By mapping microrganisms that travel unseen on our bodies, we can also hypothesize the environment as a repository of unique bodily traces and our movements as constantly adding or substracting from the dataset.  

Here are some photographs from our previous workshop at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. 

[microbialatlas]

A Microbial Atlas .

pseudomonas 

pulmodoras

sipheliboros

pidoilociras

How old is a microbe.  How old are we really if microbes coinhabit our bodies? 

The multitudes of microbes that inhabit our world are sentient witnesses to the unfolding of planetary life, through cataclysm, adaptation, conflict, and partnership. Far from being silent, they are a busy community existing at the boundaries of visibility, their thriving agencies all the more apparent when we look closely at their role in the development and maintenance of animals, plants, and ecosystems. Our project concerns a fundamental query underlying the nascent rise of artistic practices founded in the spaces and artefacts of the scientific laboratory—that of the role and position of the artist as ‘witness’

This project hunts for the microbial sage, a mythical and venerable micro-organism who has evolved an empathy for the human race.  A species of wind-loving bacteria that lives in the earth, in plants, underground, and in the clouds that collectively determine the fecundity of our soil, the breathability of the air and the abundance of water.

A microbial ancestry, this project is part treasure hunt - scraping, harvesting, plating the air, soil and water biomes for elderly micro-organisms; part visual in tracing a microbial lineage for the human body.  In this case genomic profiles are targeted on the terrains of the skin to represent, inform and visualize the body as an entity made up of multiple temporalities and as a result, boasting a multiplicity of meanings, narratives, memories, mythologies, micro-anthologies ;   the consequence of being in a hybrid, interconnected and tendential state of becoming.